Sparks

• Designers: Adrian Adamescu, Purluca Florin, Kjetil Svendsen and Kristian A Ostby
• Publisher: Alion
• Players: 1-4
• Age: 12+
• Time: 45 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

This robot factory needs you! With the assistance of your trusty animal companions, mechanical marvels will soon start rolling off your assembly line — then you just need to add some spark to bring those robots alive. Explore the junkyard to gather dice for constructing robots or upgrading your factory. Keep a keen eye on your line-up of charming animal aides; they’re the cornerstone of your winning strategy.

In Sparks, each player runs a robot factory and takes turns being the active player. As the active player, you play one of your production tiles to take a number of dice from the junkyard; all other players then take one die each. All players simultaneously use their dice to complete robots or level up their factory.

Players can also use spark to activate the abilities of their completed robots, or use cogs to recruit their animal assistants. You start the game with six assistants, each with a unique ability, and you should shape your strategy around them. The variety of assistants ensures that each game provides a different challenge. In the advanced game, players draft the assistants, providing more strategic options.

To set the game up, place the board on the table, with bonus tiles placed on appropriate spaces and choosing 6 of the 8 upgrade tiles to use in this game.  The decks of Robot and Assistant cards are placed nearby.  Two goal tiles are also drawn and placed on the board.

Each player gets their own board, their scoring markers and production tiles.  Each places one scoring marker on each of the 4 scoring tracks on the main board.  A level marker is placed on the lowest level of the track at the bottom right, and each player also gets a single spark token – to be kept in the upper left. Players get a starting hand of 4 Robot cards, choosing three to go in the slots at the bottom of their player board and one to be discarded.  Each player then gets a hand of 6 Assistant cards.

At the beginning of a turn, discard any dice still on the junkyard board and then draw 7 new dice and roll them before placing them on the dice spaces.  The active player then chooses one of their remaining production tiles and places it in the junkyard, then taking the number of dice shown on the tile as well as any additional effect shown on the tile.  All dice taken must come from the left or the right side of the row.  When you take the dice, do not change their value, and simply place them next to your player board.  All other players, going clockwise from the active player, take a single die from the junkyard, again from either the leftmost or rightmost slot.

Once everyone has dice, all players simultaneously resolve them. 

• Upgrade factory – place your die on an available space on your upgrade section of the player board, the color of the die must match the space. If the total of all dice in the area meets or exceeds the next upgrade threshold (see the chart to the right of your board), discard the dice, move your level marker up to the next step and gain and bonuses as shown to the left of the chart
• Build a robot – place a die on a vacant space in your assembly line, it must match the number or color of the space you play on.  If you cover the final space on a robot card, that robot is complete and the card can be moved to the right of your player board. You will advance your score marker in the corresponding score row (number of arrows on the left of the robot card) as well as gain any bonuses on the bottom of the robot card.  Note that some robot bonuses need to be activated with a spark, and this can be one only once per round.  If you pass over a bonus tile in the scoring rows, immediately gain the bonus you pass over.  If you are at the end of a scoring track, you can take those points on any other track.

You can also use cogs to help you manipulate the dice. These actions can be done at any time.

• Sell a die to gain a cog
• Change a die value by 1 by paying a cog
• Ignore a color requirement for placement by paying 2 cogs
• Recruit an assistant card: 1 cog for the 1st, 2 cogs for the 2nd, …  Each assistant card has an immediate or permanent effect

When all players have done their action(s), the turn ends. Players can sort at most 1 die between rounds (all others should be sold for cogs). Players can choose to discard any unfinished robot cards and sell dice placed on them for cogs.  Now, all players refill their assembly lines if they have empty spaces – draw one more card than the number of empty spaces and refill the spaces, discarding the unchosen card.

When all players have had a chance to go first in a turn, the round ends.  At this time, all sparks that have been played are returned to storage.  These sparks can then be used again in the next round.

At the end of the fourth round, all players will have played all their action tiles. Players now calculate their score.

• Score based on position of each of the four scoring tracks
• Current factory level multiplied by the number of assistant cards played
• Individually score played assistant cards
• Score any upgrade tiles
• 3 points per each full set of four differently colored robot cards
• 1 point per 3 cogs left over
• 5 points per goal tile you have fulfilled

The player with the most points wins. Ties broken in favor of the player with the most remaining cogs.

My thoughts on the game

Sparks is a surprisingly quick/short dice manipulation game.  When I first read the rules, I didn’t quite grok how short the game would be.  In a 3p game, there are only 12 total turns in the game!  You use each of your action tiles once (3(+2)+3+4+5) and you get a single die on all the opponent turns, so you only are guaranteed 23 dice total in the game.

With those dice, you need to finish robots, upgrade your factory, get upgrades to build your engine, and everything else!  Heck, there may even be times where you have to see a die for a cog in order to transform another die into something you can use!  In any event, don’t be surprised when you want to do a lot more things than you have the dice for…

The dice drafting situation is interesting, and you only get to use each of your four tiles once (and they each offer their own twist on the draft) – so using them at the right time is a prime factor to success.  It’s also important to consider what choices you are leaving the opponents (well at least the next player in order as that’s the only player you can be sure of knowing what is available).  

Of course, the actions of the robots and assistants as well as the upgrade actions will help you make the most of the game – by giving you extra dice or letting you manipulate the ones you have.  Trying to figure out how to make them work well together is a key part of the strategy.  Sure, it’ll help to be a bit lucky in the card draw as you have to have access to the right cards in order to play them, but the game does seem to provide a number of ways to give you enough choice.

It’ll probably take a few games to get the hang of which actions really help you out more than others.  There’s also a bit of a learning curve to using the cogs to their maximum potential – whether it’s spending them on assistant cards or using them to modify dice etc.  You have lots of options on where to spend dice.  Finishing robots give scoring track bumps which then leads to rewards such as upgrade tiles or other track bumps.  Upgrading your factory leads to more upgrades and sparks, and you’ll want a high multiplier at the end of the game, especially if you’re going heavy into the assistant cards.  Of course, you have to have the right numbers/colors, so that adds to the complexity of the moving pieces here in the puzzle.  Players will have to carefully look at the upgrade tiles in play each game to determine what sorts of advantages they will be able to gain.  The bonus tiles on the scoring tracks might also prioritize which robots you try to finish first…

The components are physically nice. The little robot meeples as scoring tokens are nice and the player board is laid out in a way that just works.  As always, I’m really not a fan of the fact that the player colors are the same as the scoring tracks.  I find that this system always leads to possible scoring mistakes – though in this game, at least there is a game mechanism behind it – as each player color uses its own colored dice in a special way, and thus, the tracks have to be the same colors as the players.  Just be careful if you’re not moving your own pieces to make sure that someone moves the green robot on the red track by two spaces.

The rules lay out the basics pretty well, though we did have some confusion on the Assistants.  This is mostly player error (well, my error), but it was a bit confusing when the page in the rules that describes the Assistants didn’t have the names of all the different Assistant cards.  So I missed the explanation on a particular card that would have cleared things up – because I was in a rush and I didn’t want to re-read the whole page in the middle of the game.  Other than that, things are explained well with illustration/examples to help.  You’ll also need some paper or a scoring app as there are a fair number of things to add up at the end of the game and no scoring sheet.

There is a lot to think about in Sparks – accentuated by the fairly limited number of turns/dice you get in the game.  I like this sort of optimization puzzle, and I look forward to getting more plays with it.  With the changing combination of upgrade tiles and assistant cards each game (coupled with the goal tiles and random draw of robots), you’ll have to rethink your strategy each game to best take advantage of what you have.  

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it. Dale
• Neutral.
• Not for me…